The myth of originality began a few hundred years ago, reached its climax with the avant-garde movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, and then receded. Today, we are swept up in a new myth of postmodernism, which demands the recognition that we are all just repeating, collaging, altering, or re-mixing. Nothing is original and everything has been done before. Or has it? Has the location and execution of originality altered? Is it still located in the agent? Is each knowledge maker a unique collagist, creating original styles of re-mixing or merely borrowing from a network of relations? Perhaps each formation of knowledge creates a unique iteration of those relations or perhaps it’s glorified plagiarism.

As researchers, makers and creators of knowledge with interdisciplinary methods, these questions incite us to inquire about what we are doing and how we are doing it. Are we simply revising, rephrasing and regurgitating the good work that has gone before us, or is the work truly original? Does it matter?

Re-Originality is the theme of Concordia’s 2015 Annual Graduate Humanities Conference and a call to reflect on the ways in which we create and position our work.

The conference theme is supported by a reimagining of the traditional conference format with participatory mixers, keynote speakers with a twist and performative soirees.

Potential Topics for Contributions (but not limited to):

Curation

-creative and curatorial practices in the digital age

-new methods of presentation and communication

-the archiving of self

Plagiarism

-positive plagiarism

-appropriation art, copyright, and intellectual property concerns

-theft and homage

-authorship & ownership

-conceptions of property in niche communities

Cultures of Appropriation

-appropriation or appreciation?

-adopting/utilizing non-traditional methods of research or knowledge making

-transculturation

Collage & Remix

-thresholds of creativity, margins of originality

-remix culture

-supercuts, mods, fusions, hybrids

Propose your own panel

-3 person panels with a topic of your choosing

Please send a 300 word abstract (English or French), CV and brief biographical note, including contact and institutional affiliation to humanities.phd@gmail.comno later than Friday, January 16th, 2015. Successful submissions will be notified on January 30th, 2015.

Artists may also include several images (less than five, maximum 72dpi). Please send in a single PDF, RTF, ODF or Word document. Conference information online at http://humanities-phd-gsa.ca

In addition to traditional 15-minute paper presentations, our theme is supported by a reimagining of the normative conference format by also inviting proposals for innovative forms of knowledge sharing such as immersive and interactive workshops, performative or demonstrative presentations, installations and exhibitions, and ‘lightning round’ presentations (5 minutes, 5 slides). Please indicate your preference for one or two of these presentation formats in your submission. If you are interested in presenting a performative demonstration or workshop, please include a paragraph or two about how you envision that working (space, time, logistics, tech needs, etc).